Randle Washington

We arrived at a rainy Cascade Peaks RV Park in Randle Washington about 1:00 p.m. It is a large RV Park with over 700 sites, 120 full hook-ups and the rest electric & water hook-ups. The only full hook-ups are grass sites close to the highway so some traffic noise. The partial hook-ups are dirt sites tucked back in the woods so you feel like you are way out in the forest. Evidently you can purchase these sites also. There is even a golf course! They boast Saunas, Hot Tub, Tanning Booth, Exercise Room and Ping Pong Tables in the brochure and I assume those are located in the Spa or Family Center building.

We have no phone service out here, but I’m still able to get on the ‘net. It’s slow service but not bad. Guess that makes Verizon’s coverage better than AT&T’s. If you know me you already know that I would much rather have internet than phone anyway…so this works just fine for me.

The weather has improved and it is currently about 70 degrees and mostly cloudy but no rain. We went for a walk around the place. It is really pretty. Now Dave is sitting outside with Cheye while I am inside obviously typing. We are going to head in to Randle tonight for dinner. We haven’t eaten in a restaurant for quite a while and it feels like time to do so!

Okay… back from dinner….YUM! We went to a little place called Mt. Adams Café and had their Prime Rib special, it was wonderful! Just the kind of dinner your Doctor tells you to stay away from. Green salad with real dressing (not diet) and croûtons that had been fried in garlic, Prime Rib, baked potato with the works, soft white gooshy roll with butter, mmmmmm! Oh, I did eat the orange slice on my plate so I had fruit too. :)

Pictures taken when we were out on our walk

We are at Yakima Sportsman State Park in (you guessed it) Yakima Washington. I have seen the road sign pointing to the park many times but have never been here. It is really a lovely park.

We had a nice visit with Dave’s Sister and Brother-in-law this afternoon. We are trying to see friends and relatives before we head out across the country. We hope to catch Dave's Brother next.

On the way to Yakima today we stopped at Walmart in West Richland for a few things and I found they had a Flip Video. It is a small video camera that is basically a 2 GB hard drive with a USB plug to hook up to your computer. Very handy. No tapes, easy to use, very simple. You can play it back on a TV, the video quality isn’t the best when made TV size but watchable. It is perfectly fine for blog video though. Well needless to say I now have a Flip Video and will attach a short video of the park.

Tomorrow we are off over to the West side of the State. Not sure where we are going to stop along the way, not even sure we will find any park openings on the Pass. We will see!

Farewell to Hood Park

This is our last day in this beautiful park. Unfortunately we spent most of our day in town with an appointment that led to yet another appointment. I would have rather enjoyed the beauty of the park for one last day. It isn’t a fancy resort type park, only electric hook-up, but I have really enjoyed it. Cheyenne loved romping in the water and chasing squirrels and rock chucks. Hopefully we will come back here in the future.

Dave went jogging twice today… I, being sane, only went once. Well, I jogged, walked, jogged, walked for 1.4 miles and my legs are now complaining! We did go for a walk after dinner too.

Tomorrow morning we are off to Yakima for a night. Not sure what park we will be at.

Hood Park, Burbank, WA

Chore Day

Well it had to happen, a day with chores. :( Today we went into town and:

1. Picked up our mail in Burbank (General Delivery) and I thought Benton City was small!
2. Got haircuts - Dave’s looks good, jury is still out on mine
3. Got Groceries - having to learn how to shop differently, smaller packages, careful not to buy too much since we have very limited refrigerator/freezer/cupboard space.
4. Laundry - At one point we actually stood there and watched our clothes tumble in the dryer. Perhaps it is a good thing we now have TV.

We also picked up lunch at Quizno’s before heading home. We left at about 9:00 a.m. and got home around 1:30 p.m. A lot to do when you are used to sitting in a lawn chair reading or going on an occasional walk!

Dave has decided to take up jogging. He went at about 4:30 today while it was still quite warm, just after we got back from a walk….crazy! He ended up jogging most of the same route we take when we walk. Wish I knew how far it was. I’ll have to take the pick-up out and measure what I can (some of our route is over the grass and I don’t think the Park Personnel would appreciate me driving on it). I may try jogging, I should try jogging, actually I shouldn’t try it I should just do it. Geez, I sound like a Nike ad. :)

TV Time

We now have Satellite TV. We definitely confused the poor installer by not having a standard house, but he got it taken care of. Since we wanted HD we now have 2 dishes. I wonder if we will only need one dish once everything has changed over to HD TV. The next question is how we are going to haul them when we are on the road. Hmmmmm…. Just going to have to stuff them in the trailer I guess.

So the majority of the day was taken up by the installation and then trying to figure out how to run the receiver and such. We did go for a couple walks. A few people left the park and a few more pulled in. I think we are still at about 12 RV’s in the park.



Here are a few pictures from around the park. Such a beautiful park.

Exodus

As expected there was a mass exodus this morning. The smart people packed up and headed out early, the others got stuck in a line at the dump station. We sat in our lawn chairs and waved as people drove past on their way out. We were really just being pleasant, but I must admit it was nice knowing we get to stay! Of course with most everyone gone it has been a very quiet day. There are probably a dozen RV’s at the park now. I think only 4 stayed over the weekend and the others pulled in as everyone else was headed out.

A bit of a wind & thunder storm this evening. I think it is going to be short lived, but I can’t tell yet. We rolled up the awning and stuck the lawn chairs under the trailer just in case.

The family around the campfire a couple nights ago

Rain Rain Go Away

It rained most of the night, not hard but steady. By about 9:00 this morning the rain had stopped and the troops were out enjoying themselves. We went on a walk and found a new route that took us down to the marina. The view back at the park was pretty so I’ve included a picture.

Other than our walks and watching people it was a quiet day. We have come up with a plan to go from here to Yakima to see Dave’s Sister, then over White Pass and to visit Dave’s Brother in the Chehalis area. We will probably stop on the Pass for a night or two. Of course that is a few days away so who knows, we may come up with other stops to make on our path. We’ll see!


A couple pics to show how many people and how decorative people are over this holiday weekend. Click the pictures to make them larger. The one on the bottom has a mechanical, moving, lighted grasshopper on the car!

The Circus Is In Town

Wow… LOTS of people. RV’s, trailers and tents everywhere. Badminton, volleyball, squirt guns, lawn games, bicycles, lounge chairs and family barbeques.. it’s Memorial Day Weekend! It’s interesting. I could do without the child that was screaming “oh my god” every 5 minutes while playing on the jungle-gym and the swing set really could use some WD-40, on the other hand there are wonderful barbeque smells and friendly relaxed people and it is so, well, Americana. Of course there are satellite dishes, cell phones and computers, no one here is really roughing it but it’s a novel break from the usual. What am I saying, for us this is now "the usual"!!

Since there is no water hook-up we have been showering at the campground restrooms. Watching the masses coming in yesterday we decided to get up early to shower. Knowing Dave would be up early I told him to shower first and then wake me… it was 5:00 a.m.!!! There was one other woman at the showers and I asked her; “trying to beat the masses?“ She replied; “we were here last year, there will be a line later”. At least I got to go back to bed after I dried my hair.

We have decided to get Dish Network. We spent the morning trying to order it and finally succeeded. It was the installation we were having trouble with. We got info from Radio Shack that gave us a number; no they didn’t do installation, please call one of these numbers. Called numbers; 1 - we are out of the office until Tuesday, 2 - fax machine number, 3 - no answer. Off to the yellow pages online, got a number; no you need to call this other number…finally success! They should be here on Tuesday to install.



Cheyenne & Lori on our walk

Here They Come

Memorial Day Weekend… the park is gonna be full! A number of people pulled out this morning and a wave of others are starting to roll in. The weather isn’t as nice as they previously predicted but nice enough, in the 70’s but with a chance of rain.

On our walk this morning we noticed a small Class A with a KNDU TV truck parked beside it. A professional camera was set up filming someone using the trees and Class A as a back drop. By the time we got around our circle they were pulling out! Evidently just some sort of quick piece about camping or something. I may try to see if I can catch it tonight, first I’m going to have to figure out which channel is KNDU… I rarely watch the local channels…

Thought I’d see if I could get a video clip set up on the blog today. If there is one here with about 30 seconds of swimming geese then I succeeded.

Wow it worked! Now I'm going to have to figure out how to tweak audio, maybe add music, titles... we'll see!

Visitors

Sounds like a title for a Sci-Fi movie, but actually I’m referring to a visit from our friends Chad & Robin. They brought DQ Heathbar Blizzards - YUM! We had a great visit which started outside but had to move inside when it started to sprinkle. I love the slide-out on this trailer, it made having 4 people inside very comfy, oh 4 people and 1 large pooch! It was fun to get together, as I said before it is going to be odd to be so far away from friends.

Our morning was pretty quiet, went for a walk was about all. Cheyenne watched a couple squirrels that are living in a tree next to our trailer. She is really fascinated with them. We call the large windows in the slide “doggie TV” since she lays in front of the windows and watches the birds and squirrels intensely for long periods of time.

BTW - Dave’s ankle is much better. He says it just feels tired now.

I had thought having a fire in the fire pit tonight would be fun, but it is raining now so that put an end to that idea. It will just be a quiet evening, maybe watch a movie or something.

Hood Park

Well we did find a spot at Hood Park, space 42 if anyone wonders. The park is already starting to fill up for the Memorial Day weekend, I am sure it will be packed. The weather is supposed to be in the upper 70’s so it is perfect for camping. We are booked through the 29th and as the Park Ranger said, we should have the park to ourselves after Monday.

I fell asleep after lunch today (must have been that exhausting 45 minute trip from Prosser to Hood Park) only to be woke up by Dave making painful exclamations. I jumped out of bed and found him on the grass rubbing his ankle. Evidently the wood step we use moved the wrong way and he twisted his ankle. Seems to be okay, no swelling just a bit sore. Hoping it isn’t worse in the morning.

A little bit of flooding here (see picture of soggy picnic site below) but otherwise it is beautiful. Cheyenne is in constant search of squirrels and has seen a couple. Even if she caught up with one I doubt she would know what to do with it. She seemed to be interested in a pair of geese until she encountered the water… not much of a Retriever! By the way, when we had her at the vet yesterday they weighed her, she is down from 124# to 105#. Down almost 20 pounds… wish I could say the same about me! ;)





Soggy picnic site

Cheye deciding to not chase the geese

Final day in Prosser

We woke to rain this morning. Here in the Yakima Valley when you get rain it is followed by lots of wind, we were not disappointed. Windy windy day, but much cooler so that was a relief. Our big outing of the day was to take Cheyenne in to have a microchip inserted.... that was one big needle! She barely flinched and not a sound, I think I may have whimpered a bit at the sight of the needle. So now I have to mail off a registration to put our information on a national database. One of those things you hope never has to be used but it gives you a little peace of mind that it is there.

Tomorrow we will pull out and hopefully find a spot at Hood Park in Pasco. We have stayed there before and it is really a beautiful park. There are some first-come-first-serve spots and we are hoping to find one and stay at least through the 28th. After that we really can't decide - West? South? Maybe Southwest? Who knows, we'll figure it out!

I just thought of something... this will be the first time we haven't had to pack up the trailer before heading out! Cool.....

Goodbyes... naw.... See you laters

This afternoon I had lunch with 2 friends, Sandy & Karen. Since we will be heading out Wednesday morning it will probably be a year before we have our next lunch together. Then later in the afternoon another friend Debbie called and I met her and Linda downtown Prosser for a Margarita. Again, it will be a long time until we next see each other. It is such an odd feeling to have known 3 of these people for about 20 years, work with them and have some fun times together, get to know their families and now to know it will be such a long time before we see each other face to face. Of course I haven't seen as much of them since I left work, but still they were close by. Thank goodness for email, instant messaging and attached pictures! It really does make the world a little smaller. :)
----Lori

Our Walk

Our walk this morning was a route we have taken a number of times while staying here. It is about a 1 mile loop that goes past a number of wineries here in Prosser. A very pleasant area, they have paved paths between the wineries and a few large grassy areas for groups or picinics. The area is still under construction, but is still a pretty walk.

Sunday in Prosser

Today started with a 3 mile round trip walk into town to the local Grocery Store. On the way into town we came across my former boss and his wife out for a walk. (I worked in Prosser for about 20 years) I hadn't seen either of them since October 2007, before the company we worked for was bought out. We all stood on the street corner, in the hot sun, catching up. Sounds like retirement is agreeing quite well with them.

We got new neighbors this afternoon, Hal and Judy. They have park models in both Arizona and Washington State and are currently en route to their WA residence. We had a great conversation in the evening. They have been full timing 2 years now and gave us the names of some nice parks they have stayed at. They are just staying the one night, but it was fun to chat and hear of their experiences...we can use all the tips we can get!

We Begin

We have been full time RV'ers for 4 days now and so far it's been great! Yeah, we're newbies but I think this lifestyle will suite us just fine. We begin our adventure at the Wine Country RV Park in Prosser, WA - about 14 miles west of where we've lived for the last 10 years. We decided to stay in the area until we could get all the little details taken care of that a change like this requires. Next? Who knows, that's the fun of it!





Lori working on her laptop

Cheyenne's new fur-cut